Young concert pianist Adel Ferenc Mohsin is a new advisory board member of the Giordano Bruno Stiftung. This was announced today by the directorate of the Giordano Bruno Stiftung in Oberwesel. Mohsin's appointment to the foundation's advisory board is a signal that the gbs wants to increasingly set artistic accents in the future, explained foundation spokesman Michael Schmidt-Salomon, at the same time pointing out one of the artistic highlights of the current year: the world premiere of the "Passion Giordano Bruno" by Gerhard Wimberger (gbs adviser) at the Salzburg Festival.

"Compulsory circumcision is wrong – that includes boys!" With this decisive statement, the Giordano Bruno Stiftung's children's rights campaign started today, one day before the public meeting of the German Ethics Council. "The purpose of the campaign is to prevent the planned legalization of medically unnecessary foreskin circumcisions," explains foundation spokesman Michael Schmidt-Salomon. "Compulsory circumcision is not a trivial matter, as claimed frequently, but an unjustifiable violation of the right to self-determination and the physical integrity of the child."

It was the largest church-critical demonstration that has ever taken place in Germany: Approximately 15,000 people took to the streets in Berlin on September 22 to protest against reactionary dogmas, discriminatory sexual policies, and unconstitutional privileges of the Catholic Church. There was also massive resistance at the other two stations of the Pope's visit to Erfurt and Freiburg. In leading German media, however, the loud protests were mentioned only marginally if at all. Instead they celebrated the Pope's speech in the German parliament as an "intellectual major event", even though Benedict XVI dug out long disproven positions before the parliament, which in the end amount to the abolition of secular legal norms.

Niko Alm, representative of the Giordano Bruno Stiftung in Austria and chairman of the Austrian Zentralrat der Konfessionsfreien (Central Council of the Denomination-Free), has made an absurd case of the Austrian regulation that only religious headdresses may be used on driving licence pictures: As a supporter of "Pastafarianism" and member of the "Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster", Alm had his picture taken with a noodle strainer on his head and submitted it to the authorities. After being summoned to an official doctor who confirmed that Alm was able to drive, and three years of hesitation on part of the authorities, the Viennese entrepreneur was now able to pick up his new "Holy Driver's Licence".